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Friday, April 22, 2011

AVC Bot: Another Update

First of all, a big thank you to all of you who have written and commented along the way. I really appreciate your support and great advice. I've tried to check it all out and where my brainpower was sufficient, implement.

Second, look for a picture of Data Bus in race-ready configuration posted later today! EDIT: here it is

Printed new decals on the inkjet and sprayed with automotive clear coat to waterproof

Uncovered an intermittent problem with the right encoder skipping counts

So, still struggling with navigation. Figures.

Thoughts and Reflections

I posted a couple weeks ago that it was during that week I'd win or lose. I realize that actually every week before that, all the way back to November, was a win/lose thing.

I could've spent time on navigation basics instead of learning the Kalman Filtering and associated math. I don't regret it because I never would've been motivated to slog through that stuff otherwise.

I can take this learning forward to other projects. Same's true for really everything I've done. I've learned a little more about analog circuits, wheel encoders, various navigation sensors. I can build on all that later.

Given that I'm still struggling a day before the competition, it's clear that I've been reaching way beyond my capabilities, but that's when you really learn a ton. There have been dozens of mountainous learning curves to climb. So, yeah, learned a lot. Such as...

Yikes. Well it's been fun. Now I have to go try to sort out the remaining nav bugs and issues. I still am not entirely sure what to do about object avoidance. I sure hope we know where the barrels are going to be before each heat. But that would just be too easy, huh? :)